The Colony of Connecticut was settled in 1636, under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, and its form of government modelled after the one they had left, except that they commenced their General Court by sending two of the principal inhabitants of each town as representatives, after the manner of the English boroughs. When the inhabitants of this Colony found they were not included within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, all the freemen assembled at Hartford, and adopted a Constitution in most respects the counterpart of the Massachusetts Charter, save in a semi-annual instead of an annual meeting of the General Court. But the inhabitants did not suppose that this Constitution was a sufficient warrant for them to proceed upon; and as soon as Charles the Second came to the throne, they sent up a petition for a Charter, giving as a reason why they had not applied before-that they had rather submit to the inconvenience of living without one," than to receive it from any but their lawful prince and sovereign!" This Charter made them a "body politic and corporate," similar to the "Corporation of Massachusetts Bay," and under this, Connecticut continued until the year 1817.

The privileges granted to Sir Fernando Gorges by charter, dated 1639, were still more extensive, or perhaps we should say, the intention of the parties was more fully expressed in that instrument than in any former charter. By that, the territory now included within the State of Maine was erected into a municipal corporation, with all the powers and privileges of a County Palatine of Durham; and in which authority was granted to "the greater part of the freeholders of the same to make, ordain, and publish such reasonable laws, ordinances, and constitutions as should be found requisite, not repugnant and contrary to the laws of England." Further, the governments of the Colonies were ever considered in England as mere corporations, and were so described in their charters, and in all proceedings against them." These municipal corporations, as we have already seen, were institutions of the most popular kind; and hence, in the first settlement of this country, the Colonists had only to guide themselves by those plain principles of the English law which were applicable to their case, to produce just such a government as were the governments of all the New England Colonies. So far, therefore, were they from discovering any new principles of civil government, that they only sailed on in the current which had been setting in the same direction for centuries before the name of Puritanism had any existence.

We have said nothing, in the course of this article, concern

ing the character of the first settlers of this country, nor are we fairly called upon to do so. Our present concern is only with a question of history, not with the motives of those who may have been actors in the events spoken of only in as far as they form a branch of our investigation. But we say freely, that we regard our Puritan ancestors, as pious, good, upright, but, in many respects, deluded men. We yield to the Puritans all they claimed for themselves, but we cannot grant all that the eulogies of their descendants have attributed to them; and hence the Address, which has formed the text of this article, et id genus omne, are to be regarded as high-wrought panegyrics rather than sober history.

In this inquiry we have been obliged to omit many considerations deserving of notice, and to pass unmentioned many causes which accelerated or retarded the advancement of the principles of freedom at particular times. Much of interesting inquiry might remain in tracing from their fountain, during the mists and mazes of the middle ages, the meandering streams and rills that have contributed to swell the advancing tide, which is setting on, and bearing us, in this country, where— the virtue and intelligence of our countrymen, under God, must decide. There are rocks and perils all around us-in the increasing spirit of a wild and fanatic notion of Liberty above Law, and in the corrupting influence of party profligacy and party presses, which may well awaken the fears of every sober mind, of every lover of his country and of rational freedom.

ART. IV.-The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Collected and edited by HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ., M. A. 2 vols. Pickering, London, 1836.

IN passing from Christabel to the essay on Hamlet in these volumes, one experiences a feeling of delightful wonder. Conceive yourself from the edge of a flowery landscape to be suddenly submerged into a subterraneous workshop, there by the fierce light of mineral combustion to behold the powers of nature elaborating the richest of metals. The imagined transition from the sparkling picture on the surface to the mysterious process beneath it, would scarcely be more rapid than to the capable mind is the real one from the creation of the poet

to the synthesis of the critic. Mineral and vegetable wealth are, however, never, we believe, so concentrated upon a single spot as our illustration supposes, (the surface of Potosi is unsightly and barren); and fifty years ago the fact of their disunion might have been cited by the critics as an analogy to illustrate the doctrine of the day, that poetical and philosophical genius cannot co-exist in the same mind. Shakspeare was believed to have written in a "fine frenzy," and to have been, in his sane state, as unconscious of the divinity of his own utterances, as he was incapable of analyzing those of others. That, on the other hand, the possession of poetical genius by no means involves that of philosophical judgment, our own times furnish striking examples; for Byron was, we think, an indifferent critic, and Scott by no means a deep one. Coleridge was both profound and subtle. These "Remains" add new evidence to that contained in his prose works, published during his life, of his rare powers as a critic; besides exhibiting, like them the vastness of his learning, the vivifying spirit with which his heart informed what his head gathered, the richness and vigor of his style, and the loftiness and purity of his nature. He stands in the foremost rank of that select few who, in the words of poor Keats,

"tower in the van

Of all the congregated world."

But our task is a still easier one than to praise Coleridge, our purpose being at present merely to extract a few passages from these volumes, with a view to recommend them, and through them his writings generally. Some possibly, even of our own readers, may have never chanced to read a page of Coleridge; and as our sole object just now is, to produce a favourable impression upon those, who from their own experience know nought or little of him, or to remove an unfavourable one made by the report of others, respecting a man in whose wrongs the world is wronged; and as, moreover, in every praiseworthy undertaking it is desirable to secure the favour of that sex upon whom the progress of good so much depends; we will, before beginning our extracts, quote from one of his former works a passage, which, as being peculiarly characteristic of his genius and sensibility, is very suitable for our purpose. May we not safely challenge the cleverest of the admirers of Byron or Moor, not to mention their popular pupils, to furnish from their most vivid pages a passage on the favourite theme better calculated, we will not say to produce a lasting effect, but even to awaken pleasurable emotion than the following:

"Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world, and mutual love still less so. But that endearing personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well known ballad, John Anderson, my Joe, John,' in addition to a depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature; a constitutional communicativeness and utterance of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within,-to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But, above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life, even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away, and which in all our lovings is the love; I mean, that willing sense of the unsufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own; that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, and finding, again seeks on; lastly, when life's changeful orb has passed the full,' a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience; it supposes, I say, a heartfelt reverence for worth, not the less deep because divested of its solemnity by habit, by familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of modesty which will arise in delicate minds, when they are conscious of possessing the same, or the correspondent excellence in their own characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call goodness its playfellow; and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the innocence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty."-Table Talk, p. 68, 9.

The materials from which the volumes before us are composed were, says the editor, the nephew of Coleridge, "fragmentary in the extreme ;-Sibylline leaves, notes of the lecturer, memoranda of the investigator, out-pourings of the solitary and self-communing student." Besides the "Fall of Robespierre" and a number of short poems, the first volume consists chiefly of notes, taken by several of his hearers or left by himself, of a course of Lectures on Literature, delivered at the Royal Institution in 1818. These imperfect records of his eloquence abound in profound views and apposite illustrations. The first two Lectures on the Gothic Mind in the Middle Ages,

and Gothic Art and Literature, contain a masterly exposition of the fundamental differences between the Gothic and Greek mind. The subjects of the others are-The Troubadours, Boccacio, Petrarch, Pulci, Chaucer, Spenser-Ben Johnson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger-Don Quixote-Distinctions of the Witty, the Droll, and the Odd-Rabelais, Swift, Sterne-Donne, Dante, Milton, Paradise Lost-Asiatic and Greek Mythologies-Robinson Crusoe-Use of works of Imagination in Education-Dreams, Apparitions, Alchemists-On Poetry or Art-On Style. In the Prospectus he thus states one of the main objects of the course :

"Under a strong persuasion that little of real value is derived by persons in general from a wide and various reading; but still more deeply convinced as to the actual mischief of unconnected and promiscuous reading, and that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to enervate even where it does not likewise inflate; I hope to satisfy many an ingenuous mind, seriously interested in its own developement and cultivation, how moderate a number of volumes, if only they be judiciously chosen, will suffice for the attainment of every wise and desirable purpose; that is, in addition to those which he studies for specific and professional purposes. It is saying less than the truth to affirm, that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite."-Vol. i. p. 63.

Were we to extract most of the passages remarkable for originalty or beauty-such as one delights to pause over-we should commit an abuse of the reviewer's privilege, with which we are unwilling to make ourselves chargeable, however strong the temptation, and although sure, as in this case, of the readers indulgence. Passing over, therefore, many bright and good things, we quote from the end of the first volume the essay on a "Good Heart." Coleridge is regarded, and therefore shunned, by many, as a "mystic" and unintelligible transcendentalist. He certainly does delight to pass up into regions beyond the ken of mere perceptive intellect; and although such a strength and practice of pinion are needed to follow him in these moods, that some ambitious spirits sink back from the attempt into hopeless envy; the unaspiring many will not grudge the soaring power to one who returns with "sight so purged and unscaled at the fountain itself of heavenly